Happy Birthday to Me

Having reached the 50th birthday milestone, I decided to throw a big party. So I hosted a Kings of War 500 pt tournament for my friends at a local game store.

Here's most of the participants

I also put together party gift bags for the attendees. It contained custom dice to ensure that I'd win all the games, a tape measure, a fresh-off the laser cutter exclusive Wooden Wars English Civil War Pikeman, all together in the classic dice bag.

Here is one of the Pikemen painted by the Creator & Lasenator himself, Tom Foss.

In preparation for the party, I finished off a few projects: 2 GW trees, and a laser cut Christmas decoration from Cost Plus.

I also wanted to come up with a something new to run in the since I'd only played Kings of War with my Vik-orcs (Vikings figures using the Orc army list). So I quickly painted up an all Werewolf force from the KoW Undead list.

I had been collecting werewolves for a while to go with my fantasy Viking army. They would have been stand-ins for Trolls in the GW Beastman list.

For KoW, I ran 3 units of 3 werewolf figures each (the smaller werewolves were bunched together to represent 3 full sized werewolves).

Unfortunately, as nasty as they werewolves are, units of 3 figures still have a relatively low morale. So while they could run circles around the enemy & tear them up pretty well, once the enemy got in contact & started to do damage, the werewolves broke surprisingly fast.

The tournament was a big success. There were 14 players, from ages 10 to 62, & all had a great time. We had 6 different tables running at any one time, and the small army size meant we were able to get about 4 games in each during the 5 hours allotted. A couple of people who hadn't played the game before are now converts & want to play in our upcoming KoW campaign. & it seems like the game was so balanced, there was no definitive winner, but a 4-way tie with 3 wins each. & everyone one at least one game.

The party finished off with a huge spread of ribs, chicken & briquette from a local BBQ place, & my wife made the gaming classic treat, Igor Bars

It consisted of a layer of pan chocolate chip cookies, caramel with peanuts, rice crispy treats, & brownies, topped with melted chocolate, M&Ms & Reese's peanut butter cups. Insulin shots were available at an extra $20 charge.

Dungeon in a Box

Since there might be a few questions, I wanted to review my dungeon making process. I was directly inspired by OldBen1’s excellent “dungeon/house in a box idea”: Joseph Curwen House, LotR Dungeon.

Since we recently moved & had a bunch of banker’s boxed left, I used those as the frame for the larger rooms. The medium sized room is 1 banker box, & the altar room is 2 boxes side by side with 1 side cut off.

The smaller entry room was a picture storage box from Michael’s.

The floors and walls are made from a thin insulation foam called GreenGuard. I got some from a gamer friend who works construction, but I’ve not been able to find it in a retail store yet. The foam is about 1/4" & has a thin film on both sides.

I peeled the film off 1 side & used a dull pencil to draw the brick patterns and designs. The foam is dense enough that it’s easy to draw on and holds the marks well. The foam is denser than normal foam core and cuts a lot easier. I’ve found similar thin insulation foam on the websites of big name home improvement stores, but I've heard that foam isn't as dense. I haven't checked this myself.

I put a quick layer of white glue on the foam to seal it & then spray painted it grey followed by lots of drybrushing. I used double-sided carpet table to tape the foam into the cut down boxes.

The altar and grate in front of it are also made out of the GreenGuard, so the possibilities of further dungeon detailing like custom doors, pit openings, archways, etc. are endless.

The doors that I used were from Mage Knight Dungeons.

& finally, one of the nice things about using these boxes to build the dungeon is that they already have lids, so they’re very easy to store. Here are all the rooms boxed up.

Church of the ???

A few posts ago, I showed a church I had scratch built for Stange Aeons. I have now pretty much completed painting it up.

Instead of a steeple to hold some sort of emblem, I'm planning on painting a symbol on the wooden planks across the apex of the roof. I just haven't decided what to paint yet.


I know I was a bit heavy handed with the brown wash under the windows on this side.


Yep, that's the back of a building.


The mossy stuff on the roof & growing up the building is Underbrush from Woodland Scenics. Mason from Lead Adventure Forums used it on one of his buildings as ivy growth & I really liked it. It's a great way to make small growth in corners & around buildings.


The inside turned out a lot yellower than I intended, I was trying for a pine look. The side walls are plastic sheet, & the brush marks left in the paint ended up making it look a little like wood grain after I applied a brown wash.


Father Edmund can get a little messy some times.


& a quick shot of the steps down to the larder.


The interior dimensions of the building are pretty small, so I don't expect to do any actual gaming inside the church. But I'm very happy with how it come out, being my 1st attempt at a major scratch building project. I'm thinking there still needs to be some sort of symbol or mystic circle on the floor or wall behind the altar to finish the whole thing off.

I must say Skrapwelder helped out a lot. He gave me the resin roof & a lot of advice during the whole process.

New House on the Market

Below is my 1st serious attempt at scratch building a building. My only prior attempt was making the quick & easy hobo shacks featured in my 1st Strange Aeons post. But with Skrapwelder's guidance & gifts, & lots of shavings left all over the living room floor, I have completed the Church of the Eternal Flame/Eye/[insert your favorite ominous but abiguous adjective here].

The Church elders are keen recyclers, so are happy to use abandonded buildings for their meetings.

The church is a direct copy from the Plasticville Small Church. I picked one of those up, but decided I wanted a more American rural looking building with clapboard siding, instead of the rough stone or plaster siding that the Plasticville church had. So I traced the Plasticville church & used it as a template to build this one.

The wooden planking at the front roof eaves was originally a way to hide the fact that I'd trimmed too much off the peak of the roof, so there was a big gap there. But now I'm going to draw something on it, not sure what.

The roof is some resin extras that Skrapwelder kindly gave me.

Initially, the inside of the building look very rough, lots of badly cut foam core edges. So I decided to finish the windows & inside too. I added the planked floor & walls, & raised dais with the altar.

& every good church needs access to the crypts (or labyrinthian caverns) underneath the altar.

While it's not a Skrapwelder or Empey (http://a28mmbrain.blogspot.com/ ) original, I'm very happy with how it came out. Lots of fun to build. Now just have to paint it.

Beavering Away

My local club (Miniature Wargaming Society in Sacramento, CA) has decided to put together another big game for next year's conventions. Last year, one of our members put on a massive pirate game with 24 players, loads of boats & over 2000 figures. You can see that game at Pirates of the Carob Bean Sea.

The next game is tenatively called Rumble in the Jungle & will be a simplied version of the DUST Warfare rules for Weird World War 2 games.

I have been helping out by building some of the trees for the game. They are 3 sets of the the GW trees. Ironically, I've been looking to pick the GW trees up cheaply for a while, & then GM for the club game hands me 3 boxes of the trees to build that he got for $5 each.

I've finished painting all the separate parts of the trees, but still need to assemble them.

Here are the bases that the trees fit into:

Here are the leaves that will be glued on the the trees:

Here are the trees themselves:

And finally, here are the trees & bases together:

I think they've come out pretty well. My only disappointments are that I didn't fill where the separate model pieces join together, & that the grass I added doesn't show up too well. I may pull the grass of & replace it with small tufts of lichen since I think they'd be more noticable & probably more durable.

Lemax Lakes

Lemax, who makes lots of small holiday village houses, etc, also make blue water mat for use in their displays. I picked one up cheap during Michael's after holiday sale, I think about 70% off, with plans to use it to make rivers & lakes out of.

So far, I've only done 1 test piece, but since someone on TMP asked about them, I figured I'd show what I've done so far. Here is the lake I made.

I spray painted some heavy plastic sheet a light blue color & then used spray adhesive to stick the mat down.

I decided to spray the plastic blue 1st because the mat directly over the white plastic seemed a bit too stark in contrast between the white & blue. Here's a picture of the mat over some white plastic.

Since the mat isn't flat against the plastic, the contrast between the blue & white might be hard to see. But hopefully you can get the idea compared to the other picture.

The blue mat over the light blue color seems to work well. For rivers, I might try to vary the amount of paint sprayed along the plastic to get more variation of the color that shows through.

I just need to figure out how to add some sort of green flock/edging around the lake. I'm guessing any basing material or flock won't stick well to the mat.

Overcoming Ennui: Warmaster Terrain

Been unable to get myself motivated to work on any wargaming project for a long time. So, I used a recent Warmaster campaign day as impetus to finally get something done.

I dug out the Warmaster terrain pieces that I'd had for years since they'd be a quick & simple project. I ended up finishing the pieces themselves in about 9 hours. & then about another 2.5 hours to do the bases.

The buildings are all from JR Miniatures 10mm Ancient/Medieval range.


I primed them white and block painted them, with a bit of drybrushing, & finished them off with the Minwax Miracle Dip method.


The buildings are mounted on a variety of hotel card keys, used gift cards, etc. Unfortunately, some are already starting to flex & the basing material is lifting off.


These stones are actually bluish. I wanted them to look a bit more magical than just grey standing stones.


Now I just need to make a river for these bridges to go over.